Shank’s Acura ARX-06 scored its second GTP victory of the season at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, following the deduction of 200 points due to tyre data manipulation after its Daytona success – a victory it was allowed to keep in the record books as the rules transgression was only found after the results were declared official.
Colin Braun – who shared the win with Tom Blomqvist – drove an epic 1h16m final stint at CTMP but was fortunate that three cautions occurred for crashes, allowing him to save energy with his hybrid-powered Acura.
The car had been dominating the race early on, until losing time in the pits under the first full-course caution.
“We lost some track position on that one pit exchange, we just had a little problem that put us in third,” Shank told NBC. “We could see we weren’t going to pass our way up to the lead, and we missed a pit entry, they closed the pits so we had to stay out [at the next caution], and we were like ‘well, screw it, let’s just go’.
“We were either going to win it or finish eighth and I’m not here to finish eighth anymore. So, I just want say one thing, there’s a lot of people that said a lot of nasty things about my team, my family, my partner Jim Meyer since January and I just want to say this [victory] is for them.
“This is all due to the work from HPD and Acura and the MSR team, this is an incredible machine and it’s really purpose-built for a track like this, so we thank everyone involved.”
Source: Autosport